“I am proud to be collaborating with colleagues across the United States in this important initiative,” said Erika Lee, director of the Immigration History Research Center at the U of M. “With current debates and federal actions on immigration, understanding the historical context of immigration in this nation is more vital than ever.”

The syllabus seeks to provide historical context to current debates over immigration reform, integration, and citizenship. The syllabus follows a chronological overview of U.S. immigration history, but it also includes thematic weeks that cover salient issues in political discourse today such as xenophobia, deportation policy, and border policing. Listing essential topics and readings and linking to historical documents and multimedia sources, #ImmigrationSyllabus helps answer important questions such as:

Who has come to the United States and why?

Why has immigration been such a hotly debated topic then – and now?

When and why did the U.S. start building walls and banning and deporting immigrants?

What were the consequences of those policies?

What’s “new” about new immigration to the United States?

What lessons might we learn as we move forward?

Part of a recent academic movement to respond to pressing current events, the #ImmigrationSyllabus follows the#TrumpSyllabus, which helped readers understand Donald Trump’s political success during the 2016 Presidential campaign; the#FergusonSyllabus, which inspired conversations about race, violence and activism in classrooms; and the#StandingRockSyllabus, which heightened awareness of the Dakota Access Pipeline and placed the #NoDAPL protests into historical context.

World Refugee Day is June 20th, and I am honored to be able to share with you a powerful new game available free-of-charge to help raise awareness and understanding of the refugee and migrant experience.

Catherine Roignan, co-author of Cultural Detective Morocco, conducted the game at the recent SIETAR Europa conference in Valencia, and it was my favorite session of the conference. Many people in the room had tears running down their cheeks, and in the days following we found ourselves often talking about the experience we’d shared.

Groups of us gathered at tables with game boards showing different continents of the world, including Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. Each player had a pawn representing an immigrant, who was identified by name and story. We threw dice, drew cards and moved our pawns around the board according to the instructions on the cards and the dice.

Kudos to Caritas France for their brilliant work on this! It is a terrific game!

The materials are available for download free-of-charge; you print out the cards and boards, and add dice and pawns—1 die and 4 pawns (one color for each of four characters) per continent/board. Our SIETAR Europa group helped with the English translation—this is collaboration with a purpose!

“Europe faces an interesting set of immigration challenges and opportunities: Demographic pressures as many European societies age, a lively and at times tense policy and political debate over questions of identity and immigrant integration, and a unique policy environment that has knit 28 European countries together with regards to the management of outer borders, asylum, and other immigration-related topics.”
—Migration Policy Institute

Do you know that Germany has become the world’s second-largest destination for migrants, according to the OECD? Are you interested in the migrant experience? Multicultural identity? Do you work with people in transition? Are you particularly concerned with the challenges surrounding the changing demographics in Europe? Have you considered what a future might look like if we weren’t quite so limited by nation-state thinking?

Then you definitely want to watch this terrific 23-minute movie, Migrants Moving History: Narratives of diversity in Europe, made with Hauptstadtkulturfonds out of Berlin. Even if you have seen it before, it is well worth your while. Though it was first aired back in 2008, the interviewees’ reflections on where they “belong,” on “betweenness,” on the differences between cultural and linguistic identity, and the benefits of multiculturalism, are thought-provoking; the video serves as a great starting point for discussion.

As one interviewee says, “Everyone gains from multiculturalism. We need an open discussion about how societies can better facilitate that.” It got me to thinking: which societies in the world proudly define themselves as immigrant societies, as multicultural? How did they get there? And how can we get more members of more societies thinking and feeling that way?

Let us know how you use Cultural Detective to make the most of multiculturalism where you live or work!

Our world is swimming in information, so much so that we often drown in it and find it difficult to make sense of. That’s why infographics play such a valuable role. Recently I’ve come across two different sets that I thought Cultural Detectives might be interested in seeing and using (or making your own for your own purposes).

Borrowing heavily from a concept by Danish designer Peter Orntoft, the Millward Brown Agency designed the two infographics below that put data in context. Interesting, no? More memorable than otherwise?

Photo by Millward Brown

Photo by Millward Brown

Secondly, Lam Thuy Vo of USA’s National Public Radio (NPR) created two graphics which clearly make the point that immigrants comprise about the same percentage of the US population as they did 100 years ago, though their geographic origins have changed.

Graphic by Lam Thuy Vo of USA’s National Public Radio (NPR)

Graphic by Lam Thuy Vo of USA’s National Public Radio (NPR)

Do you use infographics in your work? Please share! Have you created any? Strikes me that interculturalists could sure use this terrific approach to creating and communicating meaning.

I am blessed to have a comadre who is one incredibly intelligent, wise, and loving woman. Her name is Carmen DeNeve, and she is Mexican-born, living and teaching for decades now in Los Angeles California.

A day or so ago I posted this Time magazine cover to my personal Facebook wall. Many people shared it, as it’s exciting – that the voice of Latinos can be so strong in the USA!

Well, I heard very quickly from my comadrita. I find Carmen’s response so important and quite thought-provoking. It tells a tale that is true for countries around the world with new immigrant voters, I believe, and I’ve received her permission to share it with you here.

“Comadrita, I wish, but too many issues here. First, I wonder about the numbers who really vote and are well informed, even if the total figure is huge. I’m working on this where I teach because some Latino voters have called me the night before election day to ask me, ‘Who do I vote for?’ Or doubting if they should vote. Their thinking is if they don’t study hard about who they need to vote for, maybe it’s better not to exercise their vote — sounds almost sacrilegious.

I think we need neutral political education for new voters like many Latinos, but it doesn’t happen, unfortunately. I want us to be prepared to vote, not only exercise a right that is precious. That’s why later some people blame the victims! And, maybe rightly so.”

[Additional comment from Carmen the following day:] “Dianne, I started reading the article, but I don’t like that journalists give misleading information and manipulate facts, exaggerating such as YO DECIDO. Out of the 50.5 million Hispanic/Latinos they mention, or 17% of the total US population, not all of these can vote, of course. About 10.2 million according to the Census 2010 are not authorized in the U.S. (undocumented) and of course there are more in actuality. This brings us down to 40.5 million potential voters. BUT, from this number there are those under 18 years of age, which roughly I calculated looking at last Census data to be in the 18-20 million range. The recent Census data show roughly one in four children under the age of 10 in the U.S. are Hispanic.

So we don’t really have 50.5 million voting if we take out 30 million not able to vote! This leaves us with 20 million potential voters. Do all vote? Unfortunately not so. I’m trying to educate those who can vote from among these 20 million in my community. They are adorable, but not interested in politics rather focusing on survival. The education of these potential voters will take a long time.

On the other hand, the manipulation of numbers is unbelievable as we all know. I see it as a big scheme for what? I wish, I wish we could all vote and we could actually be 50.5 million and not for example only 13.7% possible voters in Colorado. So I don’t get how we will pick the next President.

We are as diverse in political issues as in religion and socioeconomics. The Miami Cubans seem to have little in common with the Sacramento Mexicans or the New Mexico Hispanics or the Chicago Latinos. But if they want to present us as a common strong block that’s their prerogative, but misleading after all.

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Cultural Detective® is a collaborative project of over 130 intercultural specialists, management consultants, organizational psychologists, coaches, trainers and professors worldwide. We are dedicated to enhancing intercultural competence, satisfaction and productivity.

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